Harvard Business Publishing

I have to disagree with some of the specific points made by Tom Davenport in his recent post “Get a (First) Life!”, though my overall criticism is more sweeping. First the quibbles:

***“[Second Life] enthusiasts seem to be generally quite young”: Most assessments of Second Life demographics actually peg the average age of users in their early to mid-thirties and -- somewhat surprisingly, given assumptions about the predominance of male players in virtual worlds -- indicate a roughly 55/45 split between men and women.

***“There is nothing to do in Second Life except . . . try to get laid:” Squeezed in between sexual encounters, people do find time (among countless other pursuits) to design virtual clothing, some of which has been exported to the real world and sold as needle-and-thread garments; organize virtual fundraisers that have raised thousands of real-world dollars for organizations such as the American Cancer Society; and participate in virtual activities off limits to them in the real world because they are handicapped by multiple sclerosis, stroke, or other ailments.

***“I don’t have time to live my first life, so why would I want a Second Life? I also find dealing with real humans more satisfying than virtual avatars:” Yes, I understand how busy we are -- especially given all those demanding hours a week we sit passively staring at the tube, which leaves little time for engaging with other sentient beings in a virtual world.

More broadly, Davenport’s contribution to the recent wave of criticism about Second Life misses the forest for the trees. As I said in a blog post last week, other worlds have already emerged as competing marketing venues. For example, there’s Gaia, a teen space with millions of users that includes real-world advertising and serves as a platform for various kinds of social networking. A world called 3B includes shopping malls in which users can meet with friends and shop together for real-world products. Even in Second Life, users can (albeit clunkily and in a limited fashion) created a customized 3D kitchen at a virtual Sears store, trying out, for example, different cabinetry to see how it looks.

Refusing to acknowledge and explore the marketing potential of worlds such as Second Life -- “skipping the whole thing,” as Davenport says -- is foolhardy. People aren’t going to live in these worlds -- that would be pathetic -- but they’re going to use them. Before long, they’ll be central to the way we interact with one another, whether to socialize or to conduct business, at those many times when we don’t happen to be in the same physical place. The telegraph message took over from the mailed letter. The telephone call superseded the telegraph dispatch. Email and instant messaging have partly supplanted the telephone call. Immersive online virtual worlds are tomorrow’s communications medium, whatever the current technological and user limitations. And the intense experience of these places will make them unimaginably compelling venues for consumers to engage with brands and products.

Let me offer a personal data point in support of this assertion. This is my young daughters’ effortless navigation of their virtual pets through virtual worlds such as Webkinz or Club Penguin and their total engagement as they play games with the avatar pets of others in the world. Their generation will not only be comfortable in such spaces, they’ll expect nothing less. Obviously, someone else has been watching their kids at play: Disney yesterday announced it was paying $350 million to acquire Club Penguin from its founders.